Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Image searching allows a user to search for particular images within a collection of images stored in, for example, a database. In order to search within the collection of images, a user typically provides a search query to a server or other entity that maintains the database. One type of search query is an image query.
In a database arranged for image queries, images are typically indexed according to visual features of the image, as identified through image analysis. The visual features can include, for example, colors, shapes, textures, brightness levels, and other features that are identifiable through image analysis. In order to search a database arranged for image queries, a user typically provides a query image to a server. The server then performs image analysis on the query image to identify one or more visual features of the query image, and the database is searched to locate images including the one or more visual features identified in the query image. The located images are then provided to the user as search results.